Prof Onyebuchi Chukwu is former Minister of Health and former governorship aspirant of Peoples Democratic Party in Ebonyi state. He spoke with CHIDOZIE DIKACHI on the upcoming election and President Buhari’s achievements.
How soon are you going to realize your ambition of being the governor of Ebonyi state.
For me, politics is a vocation. Some people say that I am not a politician and I tell them to tell me what politicians do that I don’t do. The only two things that I don’t do is, one I am not violent, I will not go and injure anybody because of politics. I will not go and kill, I will not even send anybody to do so on my behalf because of politics and if you do it on my behalf and I can get you punished, I will get you punished.
The only ambition I have is for God to keep giving me opportunity to continue serving people till I die. So if being a governor will fulfill that ambition, I will go for it.
Some people say, ‘it is my ambition to rule Nigeria’, I am not in that kind of group. I am already over 60, so in another five years’ time, if you call me to be governor I will tell you, can I nominate someone else. Certain things are better for certain ages. There are things people can do up to the age of 80, if you still have the cognitive ability and there are things you can do up to the age of 90. You should assess yourself.
If you have one chronic illness that is troubling you or heart problem that is sever, it is not the time to go into politics. Allow others to go while you can be by the side advising.
It is not a do or die thing. After another 5yrs, I can go for President but no more governor. There are so many young people we can chose to make the place better for all of us.
Which of the Presidential candidates are you supporting.
I am Obident! There are only three Presidential candidates out there out of which the next president is likely to come from: the APC, PDP and Labour party. But if we are realistic, so far being a politician, something tells me that it is going to come from either the APC or PDP but labour party is going to make a great impact in this election. But among the three major candidate, the best person to vote for is Peter Obi. I am hoping that he will win but realistically, if election is going to take place today, he may not win but there is still time for him and his party to do a lot of work to ensure that he wins.
The notion out there is that Obi does not have the structure to win the next election.
Forget anything people call structure, there is nothing like structure, it simply means that you have officials, you have an office, you have a constitution, you are recognized by INEC, there is nothing like structure. If there is structure, why do people move from one party to the other.
Atiku who is in PDP today was among those who made sure that President Jonathan didn’t get reelected, so what is he now doing in PDP if he believes in structure. He too doesn’t believe that there is anything called structure that is why he can move in and out at any time. Tomorrow, he may even move to Labour.
What is important is whether you are marketable at the grass root, whether you are known at the grass root, you have people of influence at the grass root because majority of the people who vote, depend on influencers, people tell them who to vote for. It is only few people who are convinced, so you need to campaign to those people who need conviction. The people at the grass root especially the women need influencers to convince them to vote for you.
Since you believe in the candidate of Labour, will you move into the party to influence his victory.
I don’t have such plans. What I have done for him directly is that I don’t campaign against Peter Obi and if people want to vote for him, I encourage them to vote for him. If I were in labour, I will be among those following him around, actively campaign for him but for now I have not moved from APC. I don’t believe that I should just jump into the fray.
Don’t you think APC will accuse you of anti-party for supporting another candidate.
Who cares about that, people move from one party to the other. Today, the person who is the leader of my party in my state didn’t even want me to be anywhere near because we were in the PDP. It is anti-party that made him to be my leader in the APC. At the level of politics, we play in Nigeria, it doesn’t really matter so much.
Today PDP is allowing Atiku to be its Presidential candidate, who did more anti-party than Atiku, who made sure PDP lost presidential election in 2014. So if they can allow the person that did the worst anti-party to be their Presidential candidate, then what are we talking about?
President Muhammadu Buhari and you party has been in government for almost eight years now. How do you rate him compared to when you were in the PDP government.
Well, he said that he has done his best but that best has not satisfied the expectations of Nigerians. The APC campaign of 2014 and 2015 raised the public expectations quite high. Even now, a lot of candidates are saying things that within them they know that it cannot be achieved within the next five years. So the expectations were high.
At the Presidential level, APC said three key things and we should judge them on that. On security, there is no doubt that insecurity is even worse now than in 2015 when President Buhari took over. So, I will say that he has done poorly.
On corruption, I am sure that corruption has not abated. If anything, from what we are hearing, it has gotten worse, so he has not performed there.
The third thing is improving on the economy and I think that that is where it is 50 – 50. In terms of stabilizing the currency, he hasn’t done well. Exchange rate is far worse than when he started off. I wasn’t expecting that it would have been better but it shouldn’t have been far off from what he inherited. We have not done anything about the issue of petroleum products, so it is a failure there.
The only side I will give him some Kudos is on continuity because government ought to be a continuous in terms of policy. So to that extent, I give him excellent marks for continuity.
Most of the things he ran with are the extant plans and policies of the previous administration. I rate him very high on that. So if you take for instance what he has done with the road infrastructure, he has done fairly well. He has continued with what the previous administration were doing and he has concretized more there. He has virtually completed the Oweto bridge which was started under President Jonathan, so Kudos to him. He has almost completed the second Onitsha bridge.
Then you come to social investment, it was done as Sure-P under the previous administration but he has given it his own name, but for continuing with that we give him some kudos. There are areas that I think he has not done well for instance I am not convinced that the area of school feeding was handled very well.
In the health sector, was the response to COVID-19 adequate?
A He handled COVID-19 very well, I give him kudos and this continuation is something I love about his administration. It was under Jonathan administration that we started he Nigerian Centre for Disease Control and it became functional but there is an act now backing up that Centre, so kudos to him for continuing and ensuring that National Assembly passed the bill. So far the two appointments he made there are wonderful, Dr. Chikwe did very well and the person who succeeded him, Edefile is also doing very well.
